VISITview Sessions and Virtual Classroom Visits by University Scientists

An innovative aspect of the course makes use of an interactive distance education tool called VISITview. VISITview allows instructors to connect with numerous students simultaneously to conduct a lesson. Developed at CIMSS to facilitate training of National Weather Service forecasters economically and remotely, VISITview is especially effective for groups of people discussing and analyzing maps or images interactively from multiple locations.

Along with an on-line chat function, VISITview participants can use a speaker phone or a networked voice-enabled application to create a learning environment similar to a traditional classroom. Over 14,000 National Weather Service employees have been trained using VISITview. More information about this training tool can be found on-line at http://www.ssec.wisc.edu/visitview/ .

VISITview will be used in two capacities: first, instructors will convey topics of current relevance in geoscience disciplines via VISITview. Second, the content experts will participate in ‘virtual visits’ to the classrooms of the educators who take the course for full credit. This will enable scientists to interact with both teachers and students to answer questions and discuss exciting or inspiring examples that link satellite data to their areas of research and to generally reinforce the course content. As long as a school has Internet access, an LCD projector and a speakerphone, VISITview sessions can be shared with an entire classroom.